Who is the Countess of Carlisle, the magical spy who inspired Milady de Winter?

We discover her as Eva Green, a dark brunette with emerald eyes, in the new installment Three Musketeers: Miladi, was released in theaters on December 13. Milady de Winter, the anti-heroine of Alexandre Dumas’ work, this time plays the main role alongside those who will try to fight her: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan. A superior nun, branded, corrupted and paid, she embodies this lawless, insidious and seductive criminal who operates in the shadows of those who pull the strings, planning their murders for gold coins, without ever sobering up or blushing at the meanness of her mind. The evil woman of many identities, Anne de Bray, nicknamed Milady de Winter or Comtesse de la Fere, also known as Lady Clarique or Charlotte Baxon, did not come from the French author’s vivid imagination, but from reality.

Indeed, Alexandre Dumas wrote his original work. The Three Musketeers Based on the non-authentic or apocryphal book “Mémoires de Mr d’Artagnan” written in the 18th century by one Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. The story tells the adventures of four heroes of the court of King Charles I of England. In this work, a certain “Milady” is already being talked about, reports the magazine Opinion. She is introduced as a companion to Henriette-Marie, Queen of France, and then begins an affair with one of the musketeers she will try to kill. If Kurtilz de Sandras’s work is fictional, the author would be painting here the features of a model that really existed. His “Milady” will be Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle in England, born in the late 16th century.

With great beauty

The second daughter of the Duke of Northumberland and Lady Dorothy Devereux, Lucy Percy, her real name, was born in 1599. In November 1617, when she had just turned 18, the brash young man defied family authority by disobeying her father by marrying the man. she would marry James Hay, the future Earl of Carlisle. In one of her rare portraits by the artist Antoine van Dyck, we find her a few years later, at the age of 38, in a three-quarter pose in a long dress, her bust encrusted with diamonds. Renowned for her beauty, with her curly brown hair and cute upturned nose, Lucy Haye likes to use her charms with men.

A favorite of Queen Henrietta-Marie, wife of Charles I, and with a keen taste for intrigue and gossip, he played a decisive role in the civil war that struck England in 1642, moving from camp to camp to save his own skin. . “The funny thing is that there is a real Duchess of Carlisle who was really a spy and double agent during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century between the Royalists on one side and the Puritans on the other. Cromwell’s supporters,” said Remi Kaufer, a journalist and secret service expert, on the set of La Grande Librairie in 2019. History todayA British history magazine also says that during this period, when Charles I was captured by anti-royalists, Lucy Haye was a key supporter in delivering the sovereign’s messages to his allies. The countess died in 1660, before the restoration of the monarchy by Charles II.

The case of the diamond stud

Two years after the latter’s death, the French moralist François de La Rochefoucauld will talk about him in his book: Memoir (1662). Between its pages he makes him responsible for the anecdote of the diamond studs, an intrigue which we shall find in the first part of the Saga. Three musketeers. The romance began in 1625 when Anne of Austria, consort of Louis XIII and Queen of France, fell in love with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. As a gesture of love, the monarch gives her lover her diamond collection, a gift from her husband. Cardinal Richelieu, close to the king, is informed of the queen’s infidelity. In order to trap the traitor and prove to the king that he is the victim of his deception, he suggests that the woman ask him to wear her jewel to an important ball during the elders. La Rochefoucauld then relates that Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, called Milady de Winter in Dumas’ work, was responsible for stealing the jewel from the Duke of Buckingham, so that he would not return it to Anne of Austria at the last minute. . “The cardinal knew how to deal so skilfully with the proud and jealous spirit of this woman (Lucy Hay, Editor’s NoteAccording to their feelings and interests, he became the most dangerous of spies,” wrote François de La Rochefoucauld.

All these machinations were finally punished on March 15, 1649, when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Imprisoned for three years, he was released in 1652 before dying eight years later. Described as an unfaithful wife, the Countess of Carlisle, never having children and never marrying after her husband’s death in 1636, ended her days as single as her life.